Adventures in Domesticity -- Liquid Laundry Soap Edition

As I mentioned in my entry about my home made dishwasher detergent I have also been making my own laundry soap. I tried powder but as I also said before -- we love laundry soap that smells really good in my house -- especially the beej. He's not sure it's clean unless it smells really fresh. I wasn't so happy with the powdered because I didn't feel it got incorporated very well together and once I got to a certain point the bits of shaved soap weren't getting any smaller. I also ran through the soap much more quickly and it made less than the recipe said.

After hunting around a bit I found a recipe that I could make in my 3 gallon bucket. Most of the recipes I found were for HUGE batches in 5 gallon buckets, so I was happy to run across it. I was also armed with the knowledge from reading the comments on other recipes that I could add essential oils to my liquid laundry soap.

The recipe called for the following ingredients:

1/3 bar Fels-Naptha or Zote laundry soap (or any other bar soap that doesn't have added scents, like ivory)

1/2 cup Washing Soda

1/2 cup Borax

10-15 drops of essential oil per 2 gallons (my addition)

I decided to add Tea Tree oil for its antiseptic qualities (and I like the way it smells) and Lavender oil. Oils are sort of expensive, but I already had these on hand and so little is used at a time that it is still economical. I used 8 drops of each because . 

I also doubled the soda and the borax to increase the washing power since BJ is a chef and his coats and chef pants get pretty greasy and nasty. 

So then the recipe calls for you to: 

• grate the soap and add to 6 cups of water and heat until soap melts

•   add the washing soda and borax and stir until it dissolves

• remove from heat and put 4 cups of hot water into your bucket

• add the soap mixture and stir

• then add 1 gallon and 6 cups of water and stir

• let the soap sit for 24 hours to gel (should be an egg drop soup like consistency)

• add the oil after the soap has completely cooled (took about 8 hours)

Use 1/2 cup per load of laundry. I double it for the load of BJ's chef/ work clothes that I do weekly.

I originally intended to keep the soap stored in the bucket, but didn't want to have stir it every time I used it so I began looking for a container that would make it easy to store and then shake and pour. I had just happened to buy some cat litter (don't worry I washed the container out REALLY REALLY well) and was happy to not have to put the container in the trash. It works out really well. 

Yup. Next I need to think of a clever name for my soap so I can make a cool label for the container.

I didn't smell the oil after my first load but noticed that I liked the cleaning power of this homemade soap A LOT more than I liked the powder soap. My pastels and whites didn't seem dingy anymore which I loved.

So I did a little more digging around and found suggestions to add oil to the rinse cycle. I use a downy ball filled with white vinegar as a rinse aid (it is supposed to be good for removing soap residue) and I add 10 drops of oil to the downy ball.

I didn't have a dropper for the oil so I cleaned out this bottle and dropper (which used to be infant gas drops).

I still don't notice much of the smell on the clothes come out of the wash. But I like that it smells good while I'm doing laundry.

I'm not sure what I'm going to try next to increase the "smell good". But I do know that next time I make the detergent I'm going to do all tea tree oil in the detergent and add lavender to only the rinse aid. I'm also going to double the Fels-Naptha to make the soap a little more concentrated.

I'm sort of ok with my clothes not smelling strong since the smell goes away pretty quickly with the strongly smelling store bought detergents but I think I'll have to start adding bounce sheets to BJ's chef stuff. Unless, I can come up with some other idea for smell good! lol -- maybe a wash cloth that soaks in oil and water in between loads of laundry?

Next I'm going to make some household cleaners!

Adventures in Domesticity

I've been pinning (Pinterest) quite a few recipes to make various household cleansers naturally. I try to live as green as possible (which is REALLY REALLY hard) and I thought making my own laundry soap, dishwasher detergent, and other various cleansers was something I could easily commit to. So far all I have tried to make is powdered laundry soap. Which left something to be desired. The Beej and I are both big on laundry smelling good which I'll talk about more tomorrow. (I made liquid laundry soap today but it has to gel for 24 hours and I want a picture of that step before I post).

Today I made powered dishwasher detergent and it was SUPER easy. I modified two recipes to create my own; this one I found on pinterest and the other I found by googling around. Just happened to be by the guy who posted the powdered laundry soap.

I didn't want to make a huge batch because the person who wrote the first recipe mentioned that the soap tightens up after you make it. I knew if I made a batch this size it would clump up really bad seeing that FL is humid all the time. And I didn't want to make a batch as small as the second one.

My modified recipe was this:

3 cups of borax

3 cups of washing soda

3 packages of no sugar added lemonade (or you can use citric acid -- it is worth noting that I've read that the drink mix will stain your detergent cup in your dishwasher)

1 1/2 cups of epsom salt

Here's my ingredients all gathered together. I used a different size of lemonade packages, but made sure I had the correct total amount per the first recipe. I used a 3 gallon bucket to mix the ingredients. You definitely don't have to use something that big for this size of a batch but I know what a klutz I am and knew I wouldn't spill any while stirring if I used the bucket.

I measured all the ingredients into the bucket.

Then I stirred it all up which was really easy. Nothing really clumped too much except for the borax. Next time I whip this up I will definitely de-clump the borax as I pour it in the mix. I didn't quite get rid of all the big clumps in this batch.

Then I just poured this into a drink storage container for storage and easy pouring. One recipe says to use 1 tbsp per load while another says to fill your detergent cup with it. I will probably try out the tablespoon first and go from there.

It's worth mentioning that this is way cheaper than buying the store made stuff too. There are price breakdowns all over the internet and I think the first recipe has one written up. I bought 2 boxes each of borax and the washing soda. I have now made the powdered laundry soap, the powdered dishwasher detergent, and the liquid laundry soap and still haven't gone through the first boxes. The powdered laundry soap lasted us 2 months even with me using 3 tablespoons instead of one. I can only imagine how long the powdered dishwasher detergent and liquid laundry soap will last! This was another reason I was so determined to find recipes that work for us and that we're happy with. We need to skrimp every penny we can to save for our move!

EDIT 11/08/11: After using this a few times... I must tell you that you will NEED a rinse aid using this. I tried putting just white vinegar in my rinse aid dispenser but no dice. I started adding LemiShine (just 1 tbsp sprinkled in the bottom) and everything is coming out gorg. I picked mine up at WalMart (evil). I think I may try to figure out the measurements for adding LemiShine to the overall recipe for the next batch.